Method of protecting commercial paper.



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LBANUS M. TGDD AND CHARLES G. TIEIEL. F ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, ASSIGNOBS 'IO G. W. TODD COMPANY, 0E MCHESTEB, NEW YORK, A FIRM COMPOSED 0F GEORGE W. AND LIBANUS 1d. TODD.

HETHUD 0F PBOTECTING COKMEBGIAL PAPER.

Specication of Letters Patent.

Patented June 29, 1915..

To aU ichom it may concern:

Be it known that we, Lmvsus M. Tono and Ciiannns G. Tram., both of Rochester, in the coimty of Monroe and State of New 5 York, have invented certain new and Improvements in Methods of 4Protecting Commercial Pa and we do hereby declare the following to be a. full, clear, and exact description of the saine, such as will enable any person skilled in the art to which the invention appertains to make and use the same.

Our present invention relates to a method of protecting commercial paper, such as bank checks, drafts, or other instruments, by marking or rintiiig thereon the exact monetary value ihr which the instrument is drawn, or else a maximum value above which the instrument risnot to he honored, and the invention has as one of its objects the incorporation into the texture of the paper of a form of expresion for the value of the instrument which will n iake any fraudulent alteration thereof practically impossible.

In carrying out our invention we employ `two sets of characters, one set to indicate the amount desired to be written, and the other to limit, or stop oli, the beginning and end of the amount indicating characters, to prevent alteration of the space occupied thereby. The portion of the paper to be written upon is mutilated in some convenient manner, as by shredding it', to break the surface and disrupt and open up the fibers, and the characters indicating the value or amount of the instrument are printed upon the disrupted libers with i'nk of one color, while the terminal limiting characters are printed upon the disrupted fibers with ink of a different and contrasting color, all the characters of both kinds being placed upon the paper in close proximity. The prsing of the ink into the disrupted fibers serves to thoroughly impregnate the body of vthe paper with the the close spacing serves to revent the in sertion or alteration of a aracter, While the use of inks of contrasting` colors forthe two sets of characteisdmakes more by thy a parent any atteinp alteration e siiperpusition of the of one set upon those of the other.

Another object of the invention is to provide that notation or system of characters for impression upon the paper which is the most difficult to alter, and therefore aords the greatest protection.

Other objects of the invention will ap r in connection with the following detail description, reference being had to the accoinpanying drawings in w ich Figure 1 shows one method of marking paper using numerals to indicate the amount, preceded and followed by conventional limiting characters F'v. 2 shows an other method of marking in which the amount is written in spelled out words. Fig. 3 shows still another form in which the exact amount is spelled out, preceded by a limiting character, and followed by other limiting characters spelled out.

Our present invention provides a method of protectively writing oi' marking commercial paper to prevent the alteration of the value thereof, and may be carried out by any suitable printing apparatus such, for I f thm?i aseimSt discloled linlrsgranpahlald o e nit tetes, o.

May 13, 1913 to L M. Todd and C. G. Tiefel, for printing ap aratus, or in our joint prior application, r. No. 753,396 filed March 10, 1913 for check writers. This method may be employed in writing upon the paper a maximum amount above which the instrument is not to be honored, as a means for protecting a simple inscription, or in writing out the exact amount in do and cents which the instrument is intended to convey, and in either case we employ two sets of characters, one to express the amount or value desired to be Written, and the other set to limit or stop 0H, the amount indicating characters.

The invention comprises the mutilation of the aper and the ressing into such mutila area of indli le inks of different and contrasting colors, one color for the amount indicating characters and another color for the limiting or stopping oil' characters, and in the placing of the characters in close proximity upon the paper. The object of the mutilation, or shredding of the paper, is to disrupt and o n up the bers so that the applied ink s all permeate the exposed fiber and penetrate under the size of the adjacent portion of the paper. This makes it much more diicult to remove the ink, and

the mutilating process so weakens the fiber that any attempt to do so results in the alteration and tear' of the paperto an extent which is readi y apparent.

As previously stated, in writing the characters, we employ inks of dierent and contraing colors, and any number of such colors may be used, but we preferably employ two, such for example as blue and red, preferably using the blue for the amount characters and the red for the or stopping of characters. particular colors and their respective tions, however, are merely matters o choice.' The great advantage secured b the use of a pluof colors, is that e space occupied by e amount ch printed say, 1n blue, is definitely limited y and following characters nn in Since it is so extremely' cult completely toerasetheredcbaracterimpressedinthe me mm it Z2 b mh tem ted in e amoun c p the space occupied thereby, will result in causing a supeosition of blue characters u a eld w erein the per has already impregnated with mk or else in leaving a space between the blue and red characters.

The diiliculty in changing a character, say of red, to a character of blue ink resulte from the fact that the ink is not merely ou the surface of the pa but, by virtue of the disruption or ding of the paper, not only has the ink penetrated 'into the structure of the papersucientl to im regnate the fibers thereof, but the portion of the has been substantially weakcned t is obvious that in snbstmhitingmlk of one color for izlliat anolther bcoloriteliys necessary that e co or en eaced or obliterated to prevent the e from readily apparent. Even with exercise theutmodskillitisalmostimposible to remove all the ink Erst impreed, whichisnecearytoeecta change in the characters without a further weakening and alteration of the paper. As a result, any remnants of the previous -ink color remain it will only require a superficial examination of the check to discover any such fraudulent attempt to substitute another character for the character to have been obliterated, whereas, all the chal-actus are 1mpressed upon the check in ink of one color only, this dcult problem of removing mk, lained above, would not be encOuntered andxfi'audulent alteration would be far more simple. There is thus a direct coperatitm between the thorough manner in which each chaudes' is rated into the structure of the paper in ose proximity to ad'ant charaetersandtheuseoftheinkso coneolcraaswillbeapparent.'

as to part of its subject matter of our joint copendjng application Serial No. 434997,

led May 25, 1908, for method of protecting commercial papers.

In Fig. 1 is shown a method of writing a value upon paper in which the amount is expressed in numerals printed in blue as indicated by the letter B, and before the numerals is placed a limiting character coniprising the dollar mark, printed in blank upon a, red field, and after the numerals another limiting character also printed in red, as indicated by the letter R. The part of the paper covered by the outlines of each of these characters is embossed or mutilated to stretch and open upthe fibers to allow the ink to impregnat; the pa r under the pressure of the printing coup e. The characters are all placed in j 'tion for the purposesb oilitt, so gurt it woulible impossi e inse a or to c ge a ligure, as for example, the figure 1 to a figure 4 or 7. We have, however, conceived a modified method of writing the amount which makes alteration yet more djicult. This is illustrated in Fig. 2 where we have shown the amount, expressed in words, spelled out and printed in blue, preceded by a dollar mark and followed by a conventional character, both tinted in red and serving to stop of the lue letters indicate ingtheamount Ofoourse,anysuitable characters may be empliyed to limit or stopoE the expresion for e amount, and indead of the conveniional characters thus far shown., a word spelled out in letters or' red ink would serve the purpose even better, as exglained hereinafter;

ach modification already described is well adapted to express some maximum amount, above which the instrument is not to be honored. The preferred form, now to be described, is adapted for writing not only such a maximum amount, but more pecially the exact amount for which the instrument is drawn, as shown in Fig. 3. The amount in dollars is written in words, then the word dollars, then the amount Ain cents is written in words followed by the word cents, every word being spelled out in full. The words indicating the amours both in dollars and cents are printed in blue, while the words dollars and cents indicating the denominations of the amounts, are printed in red. These' denomination words, dollars and cents being printed in ink of a color contrasting with that ofthe amount words, serve to limit, or stop o the lawer as already described, and, furthermore, Vthe word dollars separates and distinguishes the two amounts in such a way as to prevent error'in reading them. As a further precaution, the words hundred and thousand may also be printedin redl for the like purpose of the'arounts of their respective orders. The amount in dollars is preceded by a. terminal limiting character printed in red. We preferably employ in this connection a limiting character which comprises the serial number, or other desi 'on assigned to the machine with whic the impression was made, so that, from each impresion it may be ascertained with whaltoparticular machine the impression was p uced. As in each case, these characters are all impressed upon a portion of the paper which has been mutiated by disrupting the fibers thereof, and are plad in juxtaposition. One great advantage of writing the value in this manner, over the use of numerals, lies in the fact that to change a digit of the amount, or to change the words, it is necessary to erase, not merely one numeral, or single character, but a plurality of letters. Thus tochangethedi tltoalitbecomesnecessary to change e letters one to seven Another great advantage of wri the value in this manner, is that instead o naving a substantially uniform space for each digit of the amount, as, say, for the numetals 1 and 7, we have two words of different l of three and ve letters respectivel one and seven so that there are distinctive spaces for the different characters. Furthermore, in the case of those few words having the same number of letters and therefore occupying ordinarily the same space, as, for example, one and ten, we provide for each word of such a series type occupying a different space, the word of the highest order occupying the greatest space, so that the word ten could not be inserted in a. space previously allotted for the wordone. A. changein any word will therefore 're a diierent space for the whole expreion of the amount. Owing to the described arrangement of the letters in close proximity, this change in the space required will necessitate superposing letters of, say, blue ink, upon the ground previously impregnated by the red ink of the limiting words dollars and cents. The dilliculty of such alteration has already been referred to, and it will now be clear how the various steps of the proce described combine with each other to afford a high degree of protection against the fraudulent alteration of commercial paper.

Bv this invention the likelihood and possibility of detection of any alteration will be very greatly enlarged, the persons having the requisite skill to perform such altemtions undetected will be greatly reduced. and the actual number of attempted alterations will be materially minimized.

Having thus described our invention. what we claim as new` and desire to secure bv Letters Patent is'.-

1. A method of proteotively marking commercial paper, consisting in disrupting the fibers of the paper, and impressing upon the disrupted fibers typ'e forms inked with ink of one color to print one or more amount expressing the face value characters, and type forms inked with ink of a contrasting color to print one or more terminal limiting characters.` serving to limit or stop-0l the ends of the amount characters` all said characters being placed in close proximity, whereby alteration of the characters would necessitate the application of inks of contrasting colors to the same portion of the disrupted fibers. and thereby make detection possible.

2. A method of protectively marking commercial paper1 consisting in disrupting the fibers of the paper and impregnating the disrupted -fibers with ink by type forms which print words spelled out to indicate a monetary face value in one or more denominations; also by type forms which print appropriate Words spelled out to indicate the denominations of the value words and adjoining the latter words in proper order; and also by type forms which print one or more limiting characters preceding the value words, said denomination words and limiting characters being printed in ink of a color contrasting with that of the ink of the value words, and serving to limit or stop of the latter words, all said words and characters being printed on the paper in close prom`mity, for the purpose deseri 3. A method of protectively marking commercial paper consisting in disrupting the fibers of the paper and impregnating the disrupted fibers with ink by type forms which print words spelled out to indicate a monetary face value in one or more denominations; also by type forms which print appropriate words spelled out to indicate the denominations of the value words, and adjoining the latter `words in proper order; said denomination words being printed in ink of a color contrasting with that of the ink of the value words, and serving to limit and stop-o5 the latter words` all said Words being printed on the paper in close proximity1 for the purpose described.

4. A method of protectively marking coinmercial paper consisting in disrupting the fibers of the paper. and impregnating the disrupted fibers with ink by type forms which print words spelled out to indicate a monetary face value in one or more denominations; also bv type forms which print appropriate words spelled out to indicate the denominations of the value Words and adjoining the latter words in proper order; said denomination words being printed in ink of a color contrasting with that of the ink of the value words, and serving to limit and stop-oif the latter words, all said Words being printed on the paper in close proximno l ity, and words having equal numbers of let ters being printed with their letters in different spaced relation to prevent accurate superposition of one word over the other, for the purpose described.

5. A commercial paper such as n check, draft, or the like, provided with portions thereof having the fibers of the papers disrupted and having its face value printed on said disrupted bers in words spelled out in full, wherein the ink of the printed characters is impregnated into the disrupted fibers of the paper. the value words being printed in ink of one color1 and bearing adjoining denomination words printed in ink of u con- 15 trasting color, and all said words adjoining each other in close proximity substantially as and for the purpose described.

LIBANUS M. TODD. CHARLES G. TIEEEL EDWARD H. Cums'rox, Jr.

copies of this patent may be obtained for ve cents each, by addressing the Comnxissioner of Patents, Washing-ton, D. c.

Corrections In Letters Patent Noi 1,144,742. l

It is hereby certified that in Letters Patent No, 1,144,742, granted June 29, 1915, upon the eppliction of Libunus M. Todd and Charles G. Tiefel, of Rochester, New York, for an improvement` in Methods of `Protecting' Commercial Paper, errors eppee in the printed specification requiring correction as follows; Page 3, line 69, eleim 1, after the word ernount insert the word characters; seme page,

line 79, strike out the word charecterm and that the said Letters Ptent should l be reed with these corrections therein that the same may conform to the record of thecae in thehPetentniOHiee.

Signed and sealed this 31st dey of August, A. D., 1915.

J. T` NEWTON,

[SEAL] Acting Oomnissiener of Patents. 

